Becoming lesbian mothers in contemporary Italy:

Dialectical Family Imaginaries: Navigating Relational Selfhood and Becoming a Parent through Assisted Reproduction in China

“…It is within this context that the lack of legal recognition or welfare support for same-sex families and worries about personal finances exacerbate lalas’ sense of insecurity, thereby discouraging many of them from making extra efforts to have children and/or travelling abroad to seek ART. These findings are in line with previous studies highlighting the roles of legal frameworks and social climate in shaping sexual minority people’s reproductive ‘choice’, which is by no means free but structurally regulated (Franchi and Selmi, 2020; Gusmano and Motterle, 2019). In short, although some of my participants serve as living evidence of pioneering alternative family forms in Chinese society, it is important to understand that their family imaginaries are moulded by familial and material concerns and wider structural conditions and that they may turn out to be self-disciplinary practices that reproduce established family norms and social structures.…”